Wooden Skyscrapers

Brock Commons Tower on the UBC campus.

The Wood First Act was launched in October 2009. Since then it has been promoted and supported especially in British Columbia.

Graham Lowe is a workplace consultant sees benefits not only for the environment but for a building's occupants. “The evidence suggests the reduced rates of absenteeism and presenteeism are huge cost savings and therefore translate into productivity for the employer,” he said.

One of the large projects is a 18-storey Brock Commons tower on the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus. In September 2020 the Green Construction through Wood (GCWood) Program announced that the new wood hybrid buildings will receive its support. One of them is the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) project located in Chalk River, representing the first research campus in the country to use engineered mass timber as a structural material.

GCWood Program administered by Natural Resources Canada, aims to broaden the awareness of wood as a sustainable and renewable construction material and to increase the domestic capacity for wood in Canadian construction.